It actually takes a lot of courage/balls to kill yourself. I Kinda think assisted suicide should be legal for certain people, like if you are constantly suffering/getting worse and in too much pain to where you don't want to live.
The only thing stopping me is my family, Im not going to ruin their life

I've certainly heard this sort of cliche, but I haven't taken stock of what sort of person says these things. Probably not brave people, though, or people with any sort of credibility on the topic of cowardice.

Even if they are personally against suicide (like my retired firefighter friend), the few certified brave people I know tend not to be very judgemental on what other people should or shouldn't do.

Personally, I think suicide like most other human actions can be viewed as noble or cowardly depending on circumstances. Moreover, I consider I have the right to end my own life for any reason or for none, and while I would probably want to be considerate of the feelings of a few important people, I don't think anyone else can make that call for me.

Come to think of it, slogans like this--so one-size-fits-all and lacking in compassion--really sound a bit cowardly in themselves, don't they?

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Life shouldn't be a guilt trip. It's about living. Why would it be the cowards way out? Cowardice from what?

It seems like, when someone says that, they are saying life should be awful, that you should expect it to be bad.

To me, Life is just a bridge. We cross, we go, we move forward, but bridges do more than just help people cross. Bridges bring people together. In my mind I see the places that I want to go, and the places that I will go, but there are so many wonderful people in life and I'll miss them if I get to focused on racing from one thing to the next.

I feel like it's this need for short cuts through life that can really make you feel alone. Sometimes you have to slow down. Most people don't. But that doesn't make them cowards.

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It's not the cowards way out. I've thought a bit about this saying because I opened up to someone once, and this is what they said back to me.

I think what they were trying to say, in their stern way, ' we'd miss you if you were gone '

That's what I thought they meant anyway. I guess from reading this forum I've learnt that one of the tricks is to keep in mind what's valuable and appreciable and don't live by others values live by your own.

That being said I feel extra troubled when I read that a child or teen commits suicide. They are not able to really understand what they are doing as the situation will eventually change and they will grow up and have a different life.

But, an adult who has struggled for a long time and done everything that there is to do to and has been able to look at the situation from all angles then makes that choice, that is different.

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I am a survivor of suicide. I lost my mother when I was 14 and my half brother (by another mother) also when he was only 21 and I 32. Yes, I had anger towards them. That is a normal part of the grieving process. I would try to comprehend the magnitude of pain they must have been in but, I always figured it was some sort of "mental illness" I just could understand. It was something I hadn't ever dealt with. Anyhow, I started ADHD treatment in January and felt great for about 3 or 4 months, then things changed. I became obsessed with why my medication no longer worked as it had before. I hated the way I felt. I woke up each day praying that the feeling was gone. It was almost as if I had no feelings at times. I felt flat, sad, unmotivated, worthless, hopeless. It crossed my mind one night "I wonder if this is how my mother felt?". Needless to say it scared me to death. I reached out to my dr and he added a SSRI. Point is, you can't judge someone else's situation nor is it right to call anyone suffering from a mental sickness a "coward". We don't call people who die from cancer cowards. Just my two cents.

Last edited by Jillybean; 08-25-17 at 01:47 PM..

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Ive never considered it as cowardly umm.. hmm... now i think selfish that's a hard one because i think that might be more to do with circumstances rather then all suicides. I think context matters and you cant label all suicides as cowardly or selfish or what ever it is because until you truly understand the motive behind that persons actions. I don't think you can generalize such a subject like suicides.

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To say that suicide is cowardly is, quite frankly, so callous and cruel. However, I feel like those who say stuff like that are trying to protect their own ego and sense of identity more than anything. I mean, having to empathize with someone who feels suicidal means having to imagine being that person, which means you may have to challenge your self image. You might start asking yourself if you really are as resilient as you once thought and possibly even confront the fact that you yourself struggle with depression. That's a difficult reality to face, especially for older generations. For them, it's a lot easier to otherise and dismiss the suicidal as "weak" and "cowardly" than to actually feel emotions. It's kind of tragic to think that those people are probably way more fragile and broken than those of us that actually have the guts to admit that we have issues.

By the way, I'm not attacking older people nor am I trying to suggest that there aren't any merits to the stoicism of the baby boomers and so on. But you have to admit, being afraid of your emotions is a huge downside to that kind of simulated invulnerability, isn't it?

In any case, cowardice is totally irrelevant to the topic of suicide, mostly because it doesn't make sense. To take your own life comes from a place of immense hopelessness. You aren't avoiding crappy things in your life - you are ending your life entirely because, to you, it makes no difference whether you are alive now or alive ten years from now. If you're a coward it's because you have something to lose. What do you have to lose when life is meaningless, nothing matters and you are nothing? That's what suicide and a depressive mindset does to you. That's why the whole "coward" thing makes no sense.

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